HIGHLANDLAKE -- When reflecting on his many documentaries, filmmaker Ken Burns said researching the past reminds him of "waking the dead."

So it is for Pauli Driver Smith, who after 20 years of research and 26 years of living in town, now offers the most complete "tell all" on Highlandlake residents (and those in nearby Mead) long gone from the 1871 prairie settlement immediately northeast of Longmont.

Her 128-page book, "Images of America: Highlandlake and Mead" (Arcadia Publishing), debuts this month and features black-and-white photographs hidden sometimes for more than a century in private family photo albums lent to Smith for computer scanning by 85 area families and individuals.

Of the estimated 5,000 images she collected this way, shots that made the book include a woman wearing a white dress and brimmed hat to throw corn to hens; a lucky angler holding a largemouth bass on the shores of Highlandlake's lake while smoking a cigarette; Civil War veterans kibitzing in a hall draped with bunting; and piles of wheat -- the first crop grown in the area -- stacked to the prairie's horizon while awaiting a thresher team.

Each chapter begins with an introduction on the subtopic.

But the extended photo captions tell the story and reflect Smith's intimate knowledge of the area's family trees, Erik Mason, archivist at The Longmont Museum and Cultural Center, said.

Pauli Smith recently finished a book, containing 200 photos, about the history of Mead and the Highlandlake area. The book is called "Images of America: Highlandlake and Mead".
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LEWIS GEYER
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"I think that she's got the genealogy of every person in the Highlandlake and Mead area in her head," he said.

Her command of the information goes beyond births and deaths, weddings and divorces; property sales and sugar beet dump sites.

In one caption for a photo of the 1878 George Davis homestead on the southeast corner of the lake, Smith explains that 11 years later the Highlandlake Church bought the Davis family home for its parsonage.

By 1921, the house landed on the auction block, and the Eckman family bought it to run a dairy and apple orchard and to "help an uncle who raised bees. The sign on the tree proclaims, 'Honey, We produce it, We sell it.'"

Smith, 62, and her husband now live there.

Highlandlake Church installed its bell in August 1897.
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LEWIS GEYER
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Following leads

Her passion for writing this book began percolating in 1987 after Smith met Mary Mead Jensen, the granddaughter of Lorin C. Mead, who established Highlandlake in 1871, and whose nephew Paul Martin Mead established Mead a mile south and a mile east of Highlandlake.

The older woman, who died in May at 97, first spoke to Smith while sitting along the lakeshore at the concession stand her family opened in 1920, when the water made it a resort of sorts for city folks hoping to fish and boat.

One photo in the book depicts residents netting carp to feed to hogs so the other desirable fish -- the trout, crappies, bass, bluegill and perch -- would thrive and draw tourists.

Listening to Jensen reminisce about the two towns hard-hit by the Great Depression and largely shuttered until the building boom of the 1990s inspired Smith to be the community's storyteller.

"She took me under her wing then and there," Smith said. "And when she showed me her photo albums, I fell in love with those photos and the story that they told. So, I started putting the word out."

That friendship and friendships Smith forged with other old-timers helped her record oral history otherwise kept alive in family lore alone.

Smith also combed existing written records by haunting the Longmont Public Library and scrolling through century old -- and older -- microfiche back issues of the Longmont Ledger, a forerunner of the Longmont Times-Call.

The newspaper helped her note all sorts of telling details about the place and the people.

For instance, in the early days, Highlandlake posted a 10 mph speed limit, which dropped to 8 mph on curves.

Eventually, more families shared their stories and their photo albums to make the book a reality.

Smith scanned about 5,000 photos in all and, with the exception of a few scanned from The Longmont Museum and Cultural Center's archive and one photo from the Denver Public Library's history collection, she used that trove to put faces on the past.

Lawrence "Larry" Jensen, a Longmont resident and Mary Mead Jensen's son, said the community is indebted to Smith.

"We are all fascinated by the book ... and that she will share these things. Otherwise, who knows what all would become of these photos?" he said.

A work in progress

Some facts Smith nailed down.

For instance, in Chapter 3 she graphically illustrates the way mechanization enhanced farming productivity.

During the late 19th century, it took 35 to 40 hours of planting and harvesting labor to produce 100 bushels of corn.

Farmers a century later got the same yield for 2 hours of planting and harvesting labor.

Still, Smith admits her account falls short of perfect.

The word "circa" -- or about -- comes up often enough because time has a way of erasing dates and names.

But because she grasps so much of the area's big picture, she could make educated guesses.

For instance, Smith knows that an undated photograph of a group standing before the Highlandlake Church without a bell in its tower must have been shot before August 1897, when the congregation installed the bell.

Mason said this is how writing history often happens.

"The process is a reminder that history is not over," Mason continued. "There is always more that can be extracted, and by publishing this book, Pauli is encouraging a new generation of historians to begin their investigations. ... Great collections start with some person's dream, and Pauli has certainly dedicated a lot of years to making sure that some of the past is preserved and celebrated."

New coordinator pushes Buffs to work, play at level he expectsJim Leavitt has discovered this much about his new defense at Colorado: He has some talent with which to work, but his players need to put it in another gear. Full Story

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